This application claims the priority of Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-86716 filed on Mar. 26, 2002 which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope, and more particularly to such an endoscope that allows for defining any functions of a plurality of operation switches disposed on an operation section of the endoscope.
2. Description of the Related Art
An endoscope apparatus provided with an electronic endoscope, a fiberscope and the like displays a motion image of an object taken through the endoscope, and is designed to perform various operations through the use of a plurality of operation switches such as a freeze, record (trigger), and magnification switch that are provided on an operation section of the endoscope. The freeze switch can display a still image of the object, the record switch can record moving images and the like of the object in a recording device such as a VTR, and the magnification (zoom) switch can display an optically or electronically magnified image of the object. These different switches are located on suitable positions of the operation section in view of frequencies of use etc.
Prior art endoscope apparatuses, however, suffer from a problem that locations of these switches are fixed and can not be changed, and therefore do not always contribute to ease of use. As such, it maybe desirable that these switches should be relocated when frequency of use of a switch varies depending on purposes of the endoscope, applied sites, and observed regions. There is also a need for conveniently defining locations of the operation switches according to tastes and preferences of the user, or practitioner. It would therefore be useful that functions of operation switches of an endoscope can be changed or customized by preference. This would provide an easy-to-use device.
Corresponding to the needs described above, it has been proposed to allow any functions of the switches provided on an operation section of an endoscope to be altered and defined by a processor unit, as described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 5-50725, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-276214, and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 12-271065.
These conventional apparatuses, however, require the user to operate a processor unit to alter and define the functions of the switches, resulting in cumbersome operations of altering and defining. An endoscope apparatus typically has more than one type of endoscopes connected to a processor unit as required. In this case, there is a problem that functions of switches must be redefined for each endoscope connected thereto.
The present invention has been made in view of the foregoing problems, and it is an object of the invention to provide an endoscope apparatus that allows the user to alter and define any functions of operation switches only by the endoscope without cumbersome operations using a processor unit.